Vincent Forest

Economist at The Economist Intelligence Unit

Overall, however, given the combination of the ECB's unwillingness to address financial market fragmentation and the current austerity drive in most euro zone countries, we continue to expect a continuation of the economic crisis in the remainder of the year.

Andrew Gawthorpe

Historian of U.S. foreign relations

By threatening to sour Russian-EU relations and even propel an EU member state into the arms of Moscow, the currency union is reviving tensions between old antagonists.

Peter Kellner

President of YouGov, political commentator and journalist

As far as the big picture is concerned, public reaction this year to Britain's continuing economic troubles has been remarkably static. 2012 has been groundhog year.

Martin Koehring

Economist, Economist Intelligence Unit

The IMF has reached an agreement to reduce Greece's public debt to below 110% of GDP by 2022 and to ensure its repayment. The compromise avoids the need for a haircut on Greek debt held by eurozone governments in the short term. However, the deal, if implemented successfully, exhausts most options available to reduce Greek debt other than an outright write-down of Greek government debt.

Dag Detter

Founder, Detter & Co.

If we are all going to be taking a larger stake in the restructuring of the European banking system, we have to do it right.

Cordelia Kretzschmar

Senior News Correspondent, ITV

What would it take to make you abandon your children? Not war? Not even disaster? The answer coming out of parents in Greece right now might shock you. It's economic crisis. And it's tearing families apart.

Peter Morgan

Freelance macroeconomist

The eurozone is not a uniformly successful economic model. For one group of member states to succeed another group will fail. This is as a result of the Euro providing a single currency value across the whole of the eurozone, which in turn alters each member states relationship with foreign exchange and trade.

Andy Langenkamp

Global political analyst at ECR Research and Interest & Currency Consultants

Few Europeans in northern countries understand that to keep Greece economically alive (for now) is in their own interest. A domino effect unleashed by a chaotic Greek default will have devastating consequences.

Alex Andreou

Greek-born, Alex Andreou is a lawyer-turned-economist-turned-actor-turned-political blogger and consequently disoriented

"What is the difference between Angelos Epithemiou and blacking up to poke fun at 'darkies'?" I asked my friends. Various arguments were advanced in response: "It is racist, but in a comically ironic way"; or "the ethnicity is incidental - he is an idiot and a slob that just happens to be of Greek origin".

Simon Greenspan

Gold and Silver Specialist at City commodities broker, Tullett Brown

Tullett Brown was founded in the midst of the financial crisis in 2009 to source commodities that were performing well in a depressed market place. As...

Peter Guest

Business Editor, Huffington Post UK

It has been an eventful week in the market, which began the week despondent and ends it on a rare positive note after a combination of extra liquidity, surprisingly good US job numbers and a sniff of decisive action in Europe have seen a rally in stocks start, stagger, then keep on running into the weekend.

Chandrashekhar Krishnan

Executive Director of Transparency International UK

2011 has been a year of passionate political protests around the world, often provoked by high levels of corruption in public life. Many citizens feel their leaders and public institutions are neither transparent nor accountable, and all too often are systemically corrupt.

Aisha Gani

Post-graduate journalism student at City University

Another week of gloomy statistics. Another bad week for the UK's lost generation. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) published the latest figures of unemployment this week, which has reached 2.62 million. Youth unemployment has hit 1.02 million.

George Chondrakis

George is an Oxford PhD student

These are sad times for Europe. Three countries, Greece, Portugal and Ireland, are now dependent on external financing in order to repay their debt liabilities while Spain and Italy are widely muted to follow suit. Together they constitute more than 25% of the EU's GDP. The stakes are high.

Mariana Mazzucato

Professor of Economics, University of Sussex

Contagion today is causing even the 'core' European countries to be affected by investors' fear of the EuroZone (EZ) crisis, causing a mass selloff of...

Carla Buzasi

Carla Buzasi is editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post UK

The fireworks started early this week, with shocks in store for nearly everyone, not least the Eurozone's leaders, who went into November probably feeling, if not smug, then at least satisfied they had a plan for Greece's debt crisis. George Papandreou clearly had other ideas. Having announced plans for a referendum on the proffered financial bail-out, the Greek prime minister managed to dominate the news agenda throughout the week, throwing the G20 summit into turmoil, sending stock markets falling, narrowly survive a vote of no confidence and starting to plan a new coalition government all in the space of five days.